09/03/12: Bellevue neighbors found suspect friendly but troubled

Sep. 3, 2012

Written by

Adam Tamburin and Nancy Deville

A day after a triple slaying in Bellevue felled three generations in one family, police continue to investigate what could have prompted someone to go on such a rampage.

Police found their suspect, Craig Garber, 41, covered in blood and suffering from multiple self-inflicted knife wounds at the home of his neighbors, Marylea Jordan, 71, her daughter, Michelle Pinkowski, 48, and Pinkowski’s son, Jonathan Culpepper, 14. All three were found stabbed to death.

Pinkowski’s 9-year-old daughter fled to a neighbor’s house during the middle-of-the-night attack. The neighbor called police.

Monday afternoon, police spokesman Don Aaron said Garber remained in critical-but-stable condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was in police custody with an officer assigned to him, Aaron said. Police are working with the district attorney’s office to determine the appropriate charges.

“We are devastated,” said family member Ruth McKiness. She said any further statement from the family would likely come from a lawyer.

Steve Albrecht, a former police officer and San Diego-based author who has written about domestic and workplace violence, said episodes such as the Bellevue slayings often remain a mystery.

“Sometimes there is a momentum issue with some of these people that kill multiple folks,” he said, explaining that once the act is done the culprit knows they are either heading for prison or planning suicide. “It’s like, ‘I’ve already gone down this path. It doesn’t matter. I’ve already screwed up. Why not kill everybody in the house and just be done with it.’ ”

When police arrived at the home and found Garber, he told police to go ahead and kill him.

Neighbors and acquaintances of Garber said he did not display any violent behavior in the past.

Garber moved into a one-story home on Beech Bend Drive with his mother and brother about a year and a half ago, moving from the Boston area, said neighbor Jacki Allison. People from his old neighborhood said the family moved to Tennessee after his mother lost her job in Massachusetts.

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Neighbors described Garber as friendly but seemingly troubled and suffering from what Garber said was the after-effects of working as a rescue worker at the World Trade Center collapse in September 2001.

Garber lived in Boston but was evicted from that home within months of the terrorist attack. His former landlord, Michael Rock, said Garber had lived there for about three years and at first was a model tenant, planting flowers and cleaning the front of the home. By 2002 he was avoiding paying the rent.

“He became my worst tenant and my nightmare,” Rock said Monday. “He made things up and called the building inspectors. He had them coming out three times a day. ... He went from one extreme to another.”

Garber was a regular at the Bellevue YMCA, and staff said there had been complaints about him in the past.

“On a few occasions, Mr. Garber was involved in what our staff have described as socially awkward encounters that led to complaints by both Mr. Garber and other members,” the YMCA said in an emailed response to questions.

“We are unaware, though, of any incidents that were violent in nature, and we are not aware of any incidents that involved the victims of this past weekend’s tragic events,” the statement said.

Garber called the YMCA Saturday morning and canceled his membership in a conversation that prompted the staff member who spoke with him to call police.

Back in the neighborhood, Allison said Garber was becoming more friendly with Pinkowski’s son and daughter. Last weekend, Allison said, he took the children to his backyard to show them how to shoot a BB gun, using tin cans as targets.

Pinkowski’s aunt, Deb Grey, said her niece had been on one date with Garber about a year ago but wasn’t going to go on another.

“He’s not for me,” Pinkowski told her aunt, who lives in Massachusetts.

But the friendship continued.

“Every once in awhile, she would say, ‘I went over to Craig’s house to have a beer,’ but there was nothing more than that,” Grey said.

She added that Pinkowski thought Garber talked too much about his involvement in 911 rescue efforts.

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But then, about two weeks ago, Garber told Allison that he had suspicions that Pinkowski’s son was behind the theft of a GPS unit from a neighbor’s car, Allison said.

On Saturday afternoon, hours before the slayings, Garber stopped by the Three Stones Pub in Bellevue to watch the Georgia-Buffalo college football game, said owner John Armour, who said he knows Garber only because of his distinct Boston accent on the few occasions he’d been there.

He was sitting with Josh Kirby, another neighbor. Garber made the same accusations about Culpepper to Kirby, whose GPS unit had been stolen. Garber had claimed he had seen it in Pinkowski’s house. Metro Police later found no stolen goods in the home.

The game ended by mid-afternoon, and at 4:30 p.m. Allison’s daughter told her that Pinkowski was yelling at Garber. “It was something about a cat,” she said. “She was yelling across my lawn. I’m not sure if she was angry or just loud.”

Pinkowski showed up at work as usual about an hour later at the nearby Athens Restaurant on Highway 70, with no noticeable concerns, said fellow waitress Cindy Atkins.

The two had gotten close in the six months since Pinkowski started working there, she said. Pinkowski sometimes talked about her son, Jonathan, who, she said, had occasional teenage struggles but seemed to be doing better after a summer spent at a residential camp. He’d been back home for several weeks and was doing well, Pinkowski had told Atkins. The family was in therapy once a week, she said.

Pinkowski wasn’t the type of person to be confrontational, Atkins said. If someone had made accusations to her about Jonathan, she was more likely to apologize or say she would try and figure things out than to get angry, Atkins said. But that night, she didn’t talk about Jonathan and she had never spoken about Garber to Atkins. After work she got a ride home from a co-worker. Neighbors saw her on Garber’s porch that evening after 11 p.m.